This Day in History: Antoine Lavoisier, who was amongst many other things, a tax collector, was tried, convicted and guillotined all in one day in Paris, on May 8 in 1794.
Violent tax resistance has played a significant role in the collapse of several empires, including the Egyptian, Roman, Spanish, and Aztec empires. However, the French have had quite the unique history of tax resistance.
In 1615, the residents of one commune refused to pay the wine tithe and threatened to throw the collector into the Rhône.
In Poitiers, France, in 1624 and again on multiple occasions in 1663, mobs attacked inns where French tax farmers were staying, threatening to torch the building and kill those inside.
The success of anti-tax rebellions in Saintonge and Angoumois led to other rebellions in France, including some in which excise officers were lynched. The most notorious incident was the massacre of tax officers responsible for collecting the gabelle at Agen in June 1635.
A second "Croquants′ Revolt" in 1636–37 (with some outbreaks as early as 1628) concerned the taxes being raised to support France′s entry into the Thirty Years' War. The revolt included the lynching of tax officials, a tax strike, and a major battle at which over 2,000 people were killed. The major rebellion was defeated, but outbreaks of mass tax resistance continued as late as 1658.
From 1638 to 1645, the residents of Pardiac refused to pay their taxes, rose up to free the officials who had been imprisoned for failure to remit the tax money, repulsed government troops sent to enforce the tax laws, and massacred a tax official and his bodyguard.
In 1639–43, the revolt of the va-nu-pieds in Normandy included a tax strike and attacks on the homes of tax farmers. In 1643 there were attacks on tax collectors in multiple regions of France. The Fronde of 1646–53 was also marked by anti-tax riots.
The revolt of the papier timbré in 1675 was centered on a new stamp tax, and included destruction of tax offices and attacks on tax- and tithe-collectors.
In 1682, a village curate led a tax revolt in which the villagers stoned the monks and the tithe agent who had come to collect a grain tithe.
See also: Dickens Knew Taxes Started the French Revolution
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